Giles Bowkett on one of Silicon Valley’s most persistent delusions:
If by “the smartest people” you mean “the smartest young, single geeks in Silicon Valley with time on their hands but no idea how to party,” then it’s basically true, or close enough. It can even stay mostly true when you broaden it to “the smartest geeks in Silicon Valley.”
But if by “the smartest people” you mean “the smartest people in Silicon Valley,” you quickly run into the first zone of epic fail. Steve Wozniak did it as a hobby; Steve Jobs did it as a business. So the idea can only be legit if we assume Wozniak was smarter than Jobs. This is not only a dickhead thing to say, it’s also extremely debatable.
Geeks, like any other social group that consist mostly of young males, generally assume not only that anybody who disagrees with them is dumb but that anybody who is different is also an idiot. Not all of them grow out of this delusion.